“Don’t be afraid,” the lady assured the terrified children. “I come from Heaven, to ask that you come here for six months in succession, on the thirteenth day, at this same hour. At that time I will tell you who I am and what I want.”
After a few more messages and instructions, the lady seemed to vanish into a cloud of light.
The children raced home to tell their parents about their amazing experience. Their mother punished them, first for lying and then for refusing to admit the lie. Word of the children’s preposterous story spread through the village of Fatima, and they were subjected to relentless ridicule.
But each month, on the thirteenth day, the children obediently made their way to the Cova da Iria, and the lady never disappointed them. Slowly but surely, with each passing month, larger and more curious crowds began following the children to the site of the apparition, despite the fact that no one except the children could see or hear the lady as she shared important secrets with them. Finally, she promised a miracle in October, the sixth month of her appearances to them, that would make everyone believe.
On the 13th of October, 1917, a crowd of nearly seventy thousand followed Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta through a hard steady rain to the Cova da Iria. At the stroke of noon the lady appeared and, as promised during her first appearance, she revealed to the children who she was and what she wanted.
“I am the Lady of the Rosary,” she said, “and I would like a chapel built on this site in my honor.”
She ascended again, opening her hands toward the sky. And in the sky the children saw the Mysteries of the Rosary, followed by Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus, who blessed the crowd. Then came a vision that only Lucia saw, the sacred sight of the Virgin Mary beside her resurrected Son.
In the meantime, the throngs nearby were transfixed by the spectacle in the sky that was simultaneously playing out before their eyes: the rain suddenly stopped, and the sun appeared.
Impossibly, the moment it broke through the clouds, the sun began dancing, whirling, erupting in a rainbow of fire that reflected prisms of color on the faces of the crowd. Then, with no warning, in one swift, blinding thrust, the sun appeared to be hurtling out of the sky toward the seventy thousand witnesses, terrifying them and convincing many of them that the end of the world had come. But in a matter of seconds, it reversed its direction and returned to its proper, benign place in the heavens. It was only when the crowds had begun to recover from their panic and their confused awe that they noticed how completely dry their clothing and the ground around them were, despite the relentless rain they’d stood in for hours.
As the Blessed Mother had requested, a shrine was built on the site of the visions. Francisco and Jacinta tragically died in an influenza plague that swept through Portugal within three years of that miraculous October day in 1917. Lucia entered a convent and continued receiving occasional visits from the Virgin Mary who, in 1927, gave her permission to reveal two of the three prophecies she’d given to the children. The third prophecy, she said, was not to be made public before 1960.
In the first prophecy, shared with the children on July 13, 1917, Mary told the children that the war—World War I— would end soon, as it did, the following year. She went on to say that same day that “a night illuminated by an unknown light” would precede a “worse war.” On January 25, 1938, a stunning aurora borealis stretched across the northern sky with such unprecedented brilliance that it was visible across Europe. World War II began in 1939.
In her second prophecy the Lady of Fatima warned that Russia would “spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars … Various nations will be annihilated. If people attend to My request for the consecration of Russia to My immaculate heart, Russia will be converted.” In 1984 Pope John Paul II consecrated Russia, which many believe fulfilled the prophecy and led to the subsequent collapse, or conversion, of the Soviet Union.
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